Frangus Ltd Cut Design Time from Three Hours to Three Minutes Using DriveWorks Solo

Frangus Ltd is a design consultancy that specializes in the design of materials handling equipment for the rail and construction industry.

We recently caught up with founder and Managing Director of Frangus, David Thomson, to see how they’ve been getting on with DriveWorks Solo.

He told us Frangus have been using the software for four months, and have already developed a number of configurators for standard parts, such as pin and hydraulic cylinder assemblies, as well as for whole products, including excavator adapter heads and rail tracking devices.

Designing to Order before DriveWorks

Before DriveWorks Solo, David explained that Frangus would design to order ‘the hard way’.

They used SOLIDWORKS for creating CAD models but to create new products or configurations, they needed to take a pack and go of a similar product, then re-number the parts and assemblies. They then had to re-work every part, sub-assembly, weldment and the general arrangement drawing.

Now, with DriveWorks Solo, this whole process is automated inside SOLIDWORKS.

Implementing DriveWorks

Since implementing DriveWorks, David says that one of the key benefits he’s experienced is ‘a colossal time saving once the configurator is set up, which translates to more work done in less time. This directly impacts the bottom line.’

David adds:

“The most important thing is that DriveWorks takes away a lot of the manual work within a new design, allowing us to concentrate on what we are really selling – innovation.”

Using Tables to Drive the Design

David states that the ability to use tabular data to drive the design is one of the most important DriveWorks Solo features that Frangus are currently using.

This feature allows them to, for example, create a model of a standard hydraulic cylinder, complete with all the drawings and data required for procurement with part numbers tailored to the client’s systems, in under three minutes, where previously this could take over three hours.

Time Saving

When asked about the design limitations DriveWorks Solo has helped Frangus to overcome, David says: “Our most precious resource is time. DriveWorks Solo enables us to do more in the same amount of time, allowing us to punch above our weight.”